• From marketing and sales to personalized recommendations, generative AI is poised to transform the retail experience for consumers.
• A blend of optimism and suspicion characterizes the cautious embrace of AI-powered personalization in retail, while regulatory moves thus far offer a similarly nuanced picture.
• PYMNTS Intelligence examines the actions regulators and retailers can take to remove the “creepy” factor from the growing use of generative AI to improve personalized recommendations.

• Retailers are looking to accelerate their B2B payments even further with real-time payments.
• Nearly one-third of healthcare providers are owed more than $100,000 from insurers.
• Massive payment delays in the construction sector cause catastrophic downstream effects, including missed deadlines, unpaid workers and a host of other issues.

• This year’s holiday season promises fierce competition between BNPL services and credit card installment plans as consumers are expected to gravitate more toward flexible financing options to cover their holiday purchases. Both BNPL providers and credit card issuers are already jostling for their favor — a contest that may well be determined by the role of enhanced features and perks.
• BNPL’s journey is now one that goes beyond mere transactional convenience. The changes underway in the industry will diversify the pathways to financial well-being and significantly impact consumers’ financial decisions. From credit enhancement to flexible financial management, BNPL’s unanticipated advantages are even capturing more of the attention — and loyalty — of a key consumer group.
• BNPL has proven its worth, prompting consumers to seek even more from the industry. Although shoppers are aware of the incentives credit card issuers offer to promote enrollment in their own installment plans, many consumers want to stick with BNPL services — if BNPL providers can deliver similar experiences. Can the industry rise to this challenge and broaden its appeal, or will it risk eroding its consumer base by failing to meet these demands?

• Paper payments and manual processes add layers of complexity to the already intricate web of regulations, documentation and compliance in the transportation and logistics industry.
• Delayed or erroneous payments can damage vendor relations and exasperate workers counting on consistent paydays. Adopting advanced payment technology is critical to solving freight payment woes.
• Modernizing AP and leveraging innovative payment systems get truckers paid faster and improve cash flow for the entire firm.

• Business-to-business (B2B) payments form the backbone of the modern economy. Compared to their peer-to-peer (P2P) or consumer-to-business (C2B) counterparts, however, they consistently come up short in terms of ease of use and security. This is due primarily to a reliance on paper payment methods.
• One of the most promising solutions to AP challenges is embedded finance, which integrates financial tools into existing AP software and workflows, eliminating the need for an outside bank or financial service provider to facilitate the transaction. Moreover, embedded finance solutions offer unparalleled seamlessness and security to AP teams.
• The benefits of implementing embedded payments are not just hypothetical. They have been thoroughly field-tested and have generated numerous success stories. Here, PYMNTS Intelligence highlights two notable examples of successful embedded payments partnerships.

• PYMNTS Intelligence interviews Ian Drysdale, CEO of insurance industry digital payments network One Inc, on how the industry is accepting the challenge of meeting Gen Z and millennials’ digital demands.
• As relative newcomers to the insurance market, Generation Z consumers crave information above all else and, lacking deep pockets, specifically want price comparison data.
• With younger consumers’ digital expectations evolving faster than insurance processes, a notable gap has grown between what insurers offer and what these customers want.

• The rising popularity of A2A payments does not necessarily make them a perfect fit for all use cases. Both businesses and consumers have grown frustrated by many of A2A payments’ limitations, including transaction limits and susceptibility to fraud.
• While A2A payments have gained prominence worldwide, their adoption in the U.S. has lagged. Americans, it appears, prefer faster payment methods such as peer-to-peer (P2P) apps to the slower, costlier alternative.
• Real-time payments have become incredibly popular over the past several years as the pandemic pushed payments online and businesses and consumers clamored for faster transactions. Accelerating A2A payments into real-time transactions could boost this channel’s popularity.

• Social media algorithms have become pseudo financial advisers, steering the financially curious toward carefully curated narratives of financial education and opportunity. The influence of these narratives is as profound as their stated aim: democratizing access to financial literacy.
• The Wild West of online financial advice shows no signs of being tamed. In a financial info-scape where finfluencers and digital personalities propagate the full spectrum of financial strategies — from the genuine to the imaginary — the call for a regulatory sheriff is growing louder.
• Picture your FI. This is a place where calculations have ruled over creativity — until now. The consumer retail banking sector is breaking new ground, marrying long-established roles of financial stewardship with the dynamism of innovation. This evolution is not merely a timely shift. It is a much-welcomed stride toward personalized financial experiences guided by integrity.

• Paper checks sent through the mail continue to be the preferred payment method for businesses, with 62% of firms using this approach to pay for goods and services. However, the ongoing reliance on checks is causing numerous delays and complications for AP teams, not to mention inviting a host of potential security issues.
• For many businesses, ACH payments offer an appealing alternative to paper checks. In Q3 2022 alone, ACH payments represented more than $19 trillion in transactions. However, despite their remarkable transaction volume, ACH payments are plagued by fraud and inefficiency.
• Virtual cards are fast becoming a popular replacement for legacy B2B payment systems, offering ease of use and effective mitigation of fraud and other complications. Businesses that have implemented virtual cards have reported high levels of success.

• In the last year, fraud has surged at an unsettling pace. Few have been spared. However, technology-savvy youth and the financially strapped have disproportionately borne the brunt. Even reputed stalwarts of banking have not been left unscathed. This is a wake-up call for the financial industry to strengthen its guard and innovate its defenses.
• As businesses continue to lean more heavily into their use of digital B2B channels, especially ones for payments, the recurring dual narrative of convenience and vulnerability highlight a key challenge of digital transformation: navigating innovation while mitigating potentially very costly risk.
• Digital fraud can be shockingly crafty. To counter this aptitude, FIs and banks are redrafting long-standing industry narratives about security. By adopting multifaceted strategies, banks are signaling commitment not only to counter fraud — but also to outpace it.

• Few technologies have sparked more interest in recent years than cryptocurrency, which hit a worldwide market capitalization of more than $1 trillion in 2023.
• PYMNTS Intelligence explores what members expect from their CUs when it comes to cryptocurrency and why CUs have added cryptocurrencies to their portfolios.
• The rise of CUs implementing new cryptocurrency initiatives could bring significant returns in the next five years if the current market growth persists.

• The inability to reroute a transaction can lead to a loss of revenue and business that, depending on the merchant and the gateway, can be substantial.
• Transaction retry is a basic must-have for any merchant wishing to capture all potential sales, as it offers an automated way to turn stalled transactions quickly and easily into revenue.
• From basic failover to customization based on cardholders’ preferred payment methods, dynamic routing ensures that merchants are always online and maximizing authorization rates while minimizing costs in any market.

• For years, luxury brands have led the way in retail innovation, pioneering personalized shopping, targeted marketing and customer-centric experiences to drive conversions.
• Luxury retailers’ lower conversion rates compared to other forms of retail mean they must place a strong emphasis on cultivating repeat customers, who are far less expensive to acquire than new customers. Over the years, luxury brands have learned that the most effective way to accomplish this is by providing a personalized experience that remembers customers from prior visits.
• Recognizing the need to attract repeat customers is easy. Doing it is the hard part. For luxury retailers, targeted marketing and loyalty programs are critical tools for gaining repeat customers.

• Andrew Robbins, CEO of Paytronix, explains how restaurants can deploy technology to mitigate their ongoing staffing problems and increase revenue.
• More than two-thirds of hotel operators plan to add, upgrade or change their property management systems in the coming year, with automation a core component of these refits.
• PYMNTS explores the automation technologies with the most promise for use in the hotel and restaurant industries.

• Worldline’s Guillame Tournand, vice president of growth and digital commerce, and Michael Bilotta, head of digital services, detail what makes the Turkish eCommerce market a unique investment prospect.
• Retail sales in Türkiye are seeing a renaissance, growing 34% year over year this January — the fastest pace since 2021.
• PYMNTS explores the potential benefits and challenges of doing business in Türkiye, including digital payment methods and impending regulation.

• In early 2022, 28% of consumers had a store card — and by the end of the year, the use of and interest in store cards appeared to grow.
• The Federal Reserve released data showing that credit card balances and delinquencies are rising, and major retailers are tempering sales expectations.
• Despite the challenges, store cards offer reward advantages to consumers and revenue avenues for retailers.

• Greece launched its real-time payments scheme in 2017
• India currently records more real-time transactions than any other country in the world
• Hong Kong’s real-time payments scheme has unlocked $338 million in economic output

• Omri Flicker, chief legal and risk officer at Splitit, discusses why BNPL needs regulatory oversight to protect consumers from predatory fees.
• The Australian government is considering three proposals to bring the industry in line with its credit counterparts.
• This month’s PYMNTS Intelligence explores pending BNPL regulatory moves in the U.S. and abroad and how these regulations could affect BNPL providers.

• With 41% of all U.S. businesses using real-time payments in some capacity, it is safe to say that B2B payments are becoming faster and easier. The bad news is that fraud is, too.
• Facing growing reports of invoice fraud, the Better Business Bureau released a warning to companies, while a man in Utah was charged with sending nearly $6 million worth of fake invoices to a produce company.
• Now that payments can be made in seconds, invoice verification is an indispensable tool for companies’ fraud-fighting efforts.